Ourselves

We are Doug and Salli Whitman.  We have both recently retired from our jobs of residential electrician and orthopedic nurse.   I have always wanted to do some long distance sailing and Salli has always enjoyed traveling to interesting, out of the way places.  Our home base is Charlottesville, Virginia.  We have four adult children, all of whom have jobs with health benefits!

Our Journey

Our current goal is to sail from Virginia to the UK, via Bermuda and the Azores.

Our Boat

Olive Oyl is a 1977 Cape Dory 30 with a cutter rig (2 jibs).  We bought her in the Winter of 2014 after seeing her advertised as a “project boat”.  She had been “on the hard” for 5 years.  Since then we have been constantly fixing and improving her, concentrating on mechanical issues more than cosmetic ones.  Cape Dorys have the reputation of being rugged, modest boats.  As I write this, we are packing for our trip to Bermuda, and frankly, we could use a bit more room.  We like to say that living on Olive Oyl is a bit like living in a well equipped prison cell.

Our Website

This adventure has caused quite a bit of interest among our friends and customers, so we have put together this Blog to let folks know what we are up to, and hopefully to minimize email traffic, since communication will sometimes be tough.